Everyone makes their move. The sisters discover the truth. No one gets what they want.

The end of Dune Prophecy’s first season delivers on everything. Every single element of the cast not only justifies their presence in the show but is instrumental in moving the show to the only place it could ever end this year: Arrakis.

Emily Watson, Jessica Barden, Olivia Williams and Emma Canning as the two ages of Valya and Tula are front and centre and deserve to be. We return to the past and discover Tula was pregnant with Orry Atreides’ child. As soon as we discover that, we see Tula swap her child for a stillborn baby to free them from Valya’s machinations. The child is, of course, Desmond and the episode is bookended with his birth and his catastrophic meeting with his mother in the present day. Williams and Travis Fimmel are incredible in this scene, two people surrounded by colossal forces, desperate to reconnect and unable to do so. It’s a great twist, one that looking back has been hidden in plain sight from the jump. It also sets up a pair of major conflicts for the next season, between the sisters and between Desmond and his family.

The arc plot is cleverly resolved too as we find out that Desmond wasn’t consumed by Shai Halud, he was just convinced he was. The truth, that he’s been rebuilt by Thinking Machines, ties him back to the hypocrisy at the heart of the Sisterhood and the Empire itself. Mark Strong’s superbly weak Emperor looks set to be the hinge for exploring that weakness next season alongside Jodhi May’s formidable Empress. They both get good beats here but the episode’s focus is by necessity on the Sisterhood.

In one of the show’s most disturbing sequences to date, Dorotea, possessing Lila, drains the pool at the Sisterhood’s home and reveals the skeletons of every one of her followers, driven to suicide by Valya and her followers. In one beat, the new generation of sisters is connected not just with the old but the ideological war that ripped them apart. A war that has just restarted and whose lead generals are now possessing a younger novitiate and hiding out on Arrakis.

That last plot puts Keiran Atreides, who has been underused up to now alongside the show’s other least utilised character Princess Ynez and Valya. The thought of Watson’s glacially calm leader shaping these two furious, impressionable warriors on the most important planet in the universe is thrilling. Doubly so when it’s tied to the reveal of Desmond’s powers and the one thing that can offset them: the acceptance of fear. In addition to every single plot coming into land, the show even finds the time to connect itself to the ‘Fear is the little death’ mantra from the original books.

Verdict: This is a spectacularly good ending to a vastly successful season. Clever, character driven and made of huge reveals, it ends the season in the best possible place. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart